Over time and particularly with exposure to external influences such as light or harmful atmospheric pollutants, hair loses or changes its natural color and its shine or luster. For this reason, hair coloring agents are widely used either at hair salons or at home.
For permanent, intense colorations having appropriate fastness properties, so-called oxidation dyes are used. Such coloring agents customarily include oxidation dye precursors, so-called developer components and coupler components, which form the actual dyes with one another under the influence of oxidizing agents or atmospheric oxygen. Oxidation dyes are characterized by excellent, long-lasting dyeing results. Coloring or tinting agents containing so-called substantive dyes (“direct dyes”) as the coloring component are typically used for temporary colors.
Apart from dyeing, the lightening of the natural hair color or dyeing the hair a blond color is the very specific wish of many consumers, because a blond hair color is regarded as attractive and fashionably desirable. If substrates are to be lightened or even bleached, the dyes coloring the substrate are most often oxidatively decolorized with the use of appropriate oxidizing agents, such as hydrogen peroxide.
In hair dyeing, particularly in hair dyeing at home, a problem arises in that natural color shades are completely covered, so that multi-tonal colors are difficult to realize.
Partially decolorizing dyed hair by the selective use of oxidizing agents to give the hair a more natural appearance is known in the prior art. Hair sections (“small strands”) to which the oxidizing agents are applied thereby bleach out at least partially, resulting in a multi-tonal hair color. The oxidizing agent is applied then with a brush or applicator, wherein hair not to be treated is protected from decolorizing optionally by aluminum foil or a so-called “highlighting cap.”
This type of application does in fact solve the problem of the most natural possible dyeing of hair, but allows only the placing of “highlights.” Achieving “lowlights,” i.e., darker sections, necessitates dyeing the hair again. In each of the cases, a time-consuming second decolorizing or dyeing step that follows the original dyeing is therefore necessary. In particular in use at home, therefore, the entire hair must first be colored before the consumer can place “highlights” or “lowlights.” Many consumers regard this as time-consuming and also frustrating, because the essential color-changing step occurs at the beginning and is only “corrected” in a second step.
It is therefore desirable to provide a method that makes multi-tonal dyeing in one dyeing step possible. Then, the dyeing of the hair should accompany the generation of “highlights” or “lowlights”, so that a result is visible immediately after the coloring agent is rinsed out.
Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with this background of the invention.